Xbox 360 Review: ‘Sacred 3’

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Interactive fantasy worlds need a satirical skewering. Deep Silver‘s Sacred 3 is not the project to do so.

The world of Ancaria has no pleasant peculiarities. Instead, it becomes bound to obnoxious fantasy fluff and dopey sexualization without hard context. Sacred 3‘s resistance to good taste and disgusting thrust of eye-rolling euphemisms are as tiring as they are antiquated. “Tired and antiquated” – that’s actually a strong fit to all of Sacred 3.

Some of that is meant to add personality (but does so poorly) as Sacred 3‘s narrative concoction of evildoers, a rising villainous empire, and a clan of do-gooder forces do battle in routine isometric dungeons.

There’s no luxury in the progression. Typically, buffing up an already steroidal hero or furthering sorcery skills are the tightened hinge which holds this realm of action RPGs together. Not anymore, or at least not anymore as far as this sequel goes. New developer Deep Silver disintegrates the idea of loot and subscribes to arcade-style rhythms – no shops bog down pace, and weapons are mere post-level handouts upon goal completions. It’s awfully socialist in execution: everyone gets the trophy.

Sacred 3 never feels hungry. Maybe the coding expects handouts too. Technical merits are bombed by teetering frame rates, and as often as the crux of combat excels, Sacred 3 is too passé to warrant merit. Orcs and demons are tiresome facades without charisma. They exist to die in chopped up stages which are suffocated by their between-level pauses, in opposition to the seamless world featured in Sacred 2.

In some way, this is a retrospective design. This is a beat-em-up, those charming if wholly repetitious button punchers of arcades, only slipped into an angular facade as if to hide its quarter-sucking origins. A handful of character classes and magic attacks fail to create the intended genre separation.

Bashing monsters with online crowds is festive. There remains something inherent in the basics of the idea wherein even meager ARPGs feel compelling. Of course, Sacred 3‘s idea of an online philosophy means automatically opening the world to all by default, and as such, it removes the capability to pause any action. The realities of life must not exist to Sacred 3 – which would also explain its near alien dialog treatment.

Ancaria is thus a boring world. Let the rising Ashen Empire have it and the universe of video games is neither crippled nor unbalanced. Deep Silver’s work is intended as mid-tier, yet it flares its chest in a competitive fire where it is soundly crushed under the girth of infinite reiterations of Diablo III. Ancaria doesn’t need saving – this games does.